Crafting Red-Threaded Side Characters and Spinning Their Stories
Anyone who reads or writes romance knows there is a simple golden rule: keep the focus on the couple. However, in the case of a paranormal fated-mates romantic suspense novel like Threads of Red, with its high-stakes, thrilling elements, and something ancient running underneath, it’s important to avoid isolating the main characters. Doing so can derail all that good stuff and put your novel at risk. Presto chango, you’ve successfully transformed your exciting story into a boring narrative. Yikes, you don’t want that.
So, what can you do? Your job as the author is to build an intriguing and perhaps dangerous world for your main characters to move through. In my novel, I have created a world where the heroine’s old reality has been destroyed and she suddenly resembles the walking dead in the aftermath, before rebuilding everything from scratch. The hero must discard his resolute traits by facing his dark past and growing emotionally.
My secondary characters must weave into the world of the main characters and effect change. They cannot just be background sidekicks or sounding boards for your protagonist’s feelings. They must be catalysts, obstacles, accomplices, enablers, and vectors for dread without hijacking the story. These characters also help to build in necessary pauses. I don't want Ellie or Ezekiel to blindly follow the red thread too easily. That’s what makes for an exciting novel.
SPOILER ALERTS — PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK
Members of your supporting cast should actively pull at the threads of your plot. The side characters in Threads of Red are not just fluff; they play important roles in the future lives of the protagonists.
• The Catalyst: The psychic best friend who forces open the inciting incident with a deck of tarot cards and a red thread from Fate’s Loom.
• The Obstacle: The glamorous Hollywood ex who complicates the romantic stakes.
• The Silent Partner: The friend with deep-seated issues who actively helps commit crime.
• The Enabler: A wealthy co-conspirator who serves as the wallet for a lethal threat.
• The Liminal Character: The shadow figure who straddles the line between a supporting character — who happens to be a villain — and a tragic antagonist.
But how do you build a high-stakes cast of secondary characters without upstaging your hero and heroine and their love story? How do authors weaponize those side characters to heighten tension, pace the slow-burn stalker plot, and weave a narrative that keeps readers turning pages late into the night?
ORACLES, EXES, ACCOMPLICES, COLLUDERS, AND STALKERS
Let’s start with Ellie’s psychic friend, Kym. She uses her trusty tarot decks to suss out why a spirit from the beyond, which is not known to either her or Ellie, insists on coming through during an interaction between the friends. After piecing together letters like “E” and “Z,” the name Ezekiel bursts from Kym’s lips. The cards she draws point to a fated mate who has achieved a great deal in this life. There is also possible turmoil for Ellie. Kym further clarifies the reading by having Ellie pull a thread from a pouch containing the colors of Fate’s Loom. When Ellie retrieves a red thread with supernatural qualities, something clicks for Kym. She solidifies her findings by reading a book she pulls off the shelf that explains the ancient myth about the red string of fate. These three things ignite a spark, and the real story begins.
Though Kym disrupts Ellie’s predictable life with this unexpected news, she doesn’t actually solve the mystery of how or when Ezekiel and Ellie will meet. The reading and Kym’s visions are not an easy fix, but they do introduce new questions. When and where will these two destined lovers cross paths? People like Ellie don’t just stumble into Hollywood and start up relationships with A-list superstars. Ellie is also married, so how can that work?
Kym doesn’t just drop a prophecy and disappear; she remains vital to the paranormal romantic tale by sharing ongoing visions and warnings in subsequent chapters.
Exes and oh-no’s! Up next is the glamorous and talented recording artist Patience Rae, Ezekiel’s jilted ex, who by all accounts has had her teeth sunk into him like a pit bull with a ragdoll in its jaws. Their very public breakup has humiliated the pop star, and she is bitter and seething with jealousy. But Patience isn’t the typical purely evil or crazy ex, so she doesn’t fall into that cliché romance trope. She’s pitiable to some degree, immature, and crosses the line when she encounters Ellie and Ezekiel in various scenes. Does she act as a red herring in the story, or is she a part of the deadly plot? Her role in the story may surprise readers, for she too succumbs to the stalker who lurks in the shadows.
In the beginning of Threads of Red, Ellie is intimidated by the singer’s beauty, and she is inappropriately jealous when she glances at tabloid photos of the diva hanging on the arm of Ezekiel Larson. It is inappropriate because Ellie has never met Ezekiel. Though Patience quickly becomes Ezekiel’s ex, she continues moving through the story causing trouble as she tries to test the boundaries of Ellie and Ezekiel’s new relationship by using her womanly wiles. She has no qualms about elbowing her way between them and flirting with Ezekiel. This distresses Ellie, sometimes resulting in a public display where Ellie draws a line in the sand. The strife that Patience Rae triggers fuels contentious conversations between the fated mates. Ezekiel seeks to protect Ellie from tabloid fodder and assure her of his single-minded love for only her. Patience unknowingly strengthens the couple’s love.
The main takeaway about this supporting character is that she doesn’t just appear, get tossed to the side for no reason, and then vanish. She surfaces throughout the narrative.
Tangled in the red-threaded web is the silent partner. Readers know very little about J.R., except what they can glean from his untrustworthy nature. He is a quiet, dysfunctional character weighed down by emotional baggage — someone who steps into the stalker's orbit and ultimately does her bidding. But is he more than that? He emerges early in the story and sticks around, popping up in later chapters. He is a walking paradox: familiar yet unknown, grandiose yet a coward.
Enter the arrogant and wealthy benefactor, Tim Hudson, a Hollywood superstar in his own right matching the stardom and executive power of Ezekiel. He is a threat by proxy, never getting his hands dirty but secretly funding the heroine’s nightmare in exchange for obtaining his goal — Ellie. He is both a betrayer and an annoying public rival of Ezekiel. Keeping his involvement hidden from the couple but allowing the reader in on the secret adds a layer of dramatic tension without eclipsing the main love story. Discovering that a Hollywood superstar is funding the psychopath strips away Ezekiel’s sense of safety and control, forcing him into a desperate, high-stakes final confrontation.
Creeping into the plot is the mysterious and dangerous stalker, Alana Wilson. For over a decade, she has loved the hero from afar, desperately searching for him as her final link to safety, love, and her dead sister. How does an author navigate that particular minefield and still keep the focus on the fated mates? Controlling the information flow is very important. When an author gives an antagonist a POV, they risk ruining the mystery. To avoid that mistake, I focused Alana’s chapters on obsession, dysfunction, and depravity, along with an overwhelming jealousy of the life her sister had with wonderful adoptive parents and him — Ezekiel Larson — vs. her own upbringing by a mentally ill and drug-addicted mother. My aim was to create an atmosphere for readers to almost feel sorry for her — almost.
I set out to both mirror and contrast the stalker’s chapters with the main couple’s romance, as well as with Ellie’s personal life and expectations. As the couple gets closer, the stalker becomes more unhinged and her behavior escalates. Ellie isn’t interested in material things, wealth, fame, or status. Alana craves those things. Ellie has Ezekiel’s undying love, protection, attention, and loyalty without trying. Alana would kill for that.
Alana serves as an example of how to write a sympathetic yet terrifying side character and antagonist. She isn't motivated by pure malice, but by a twisted, decades-long search for love and a connection to her dead sister. The stark contrast between the sister’s idyllic upbringing, her possession of Ezekiel’s devotion, and the stalker’s own traumatic childhood creates profound emotional stakes. By showing this perspective, I hoped to force the audience into an uncomfortable position: they must fear the stalker’s actions while mourning her circumstances.
Her obsession stems from an unhealed emotional wound rather than a desire to do evil. The truest suspense doesn't come from the threat of physical violence; it comes from the heartbreaking tragedy of her delusion and the tightening trap the protagonists cannot see coming. Because Alana genuinely believes she is meant to be loved by Ezekiel — to have Ellie’s life — her actions become entirely unpredictable.
There is also a profound imbalance of knowledge. Alana has spent ten years learning everything about Ezekiel, yet he doesn't even know she exists. When writing her POV chapters, I leaned heavily into this history. Her inner monologue feels deeply intimate. She brags internally about what she thinks she knows about Ezekiel — his habits, flaws, and desires — creating a claustrophobic effect for readers who realize just how closely he is being watched.
The takeaway — Alana’s POV is present in the novel early on, and at the end she is front and center. The trap she sets between the pages tightens around the couple as the story progresses and culminates in a final showdown.
A novel's plot is like a tapestry; while the main couple forms the central image, the secondary characters are the threads that hold the entire structure together. My overall intention was to lure readers in and draw characters together, so I made sure to continually tie back to the red threads, ancient myth, and magic. Readers will eventually discover how all the major and minor characters are tied to one another.
Are your secondary characters threatening to hijack your story or do they help hold your plot together?
To read more about Ellie, Ezekiel, and the side characters Kym, Patience, J. R., Tim, and Alana, purchase Threads of Red today.
